OTTAWA – In a rare move, the Conservative Speaker of the Senate publicly lashed out at NDP Leader Tom Mulcair Wednesday, deriding questions the Opposition leader made about the appropriateness of the senator’s housing expense claims as an “unfounded personal attack”.

In an extraordinary statement released to the media, Conservative Sen. Noël Kinsella noted Muclair “lives for free in a lovely house” in upscale Rockcliffe Park at Stornoway.

Stornoway is the official residence of the leader of the Opposition in the nation’s capital.

There is nothing in the Senate’s housing rules that forbids a senator from owning a house in Ottawa before joining the upper chamber. Nor do those rules require senators to spend a certain amount of time at their declared primary residence (in Kinsella’s case, New Brunswick) in order to qualify for a secondary housing allowance of $22,000 a year for their Ottawa home.

Kinsella went on to say in his statement that the rules allowing senators to claim a housing allowance if their home is more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill are similar to ones in place for MPs. “However MPs are not required to maintain a home in their ridings,” he wrote.

“Mr. Mulcair’s unfounded personal attack on a Liberal and a Conservative senator from New Brunswick amounts to an attack on his own NDP members,” Kinsella wrote. “While Thomas Mulcair as the Leader of the Opposition is given a house in Ottawa, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and the Speaker of the Senate all must make their own housing arrangements in Ottawa.”

Senators have told reporters at various points during the spending scandal that has engulfed the upper chamber for almost a year that tough questions should also be asked of elected representatives in the House of Commons. But Kinsella’s statement was the first time he stepped into the political fray that until recently he has avoided.

Unlike his counterpart in the House of Commons, the Speaker of the Senate is appointed by the prime minister and has the right to vote on bills and take part in debates in the upper chamber. Kinsella avoids doing both as a matter of principle, believing he needs to have an air of neutrality, yet he remains a partisan like any other senator.

Kinsella came under fire in the House of Commons Wednesday because he has claimed a secondary housing allowance for a home he bought in Ottawa before becoming a senator. Kinsella, who also oversees the Senate committee that supervises senators’ expenses, represents New Brunswick, where he also owns a home.

Kinsella was defended in the Commons by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said neither his case – nor that of a Liberal Sen. Pierrette Ringuette who has a similar housing arrangement – should be compared to that of Sen. Mike Duffy. Duffy was found to have inappropriately claimed a secondary housing allowance for his Ottawa residence while representing Prince Edward Island.

Conservative Sen. Noël Kinsella and Liberal Sen. Pierrette Ringuette pulled the exact same trick as Mike Duffy, the trick that, on Oct. 24, the prime minister said was the reason for getting rid of Mike Duffy. Why are Noël Kinsella and Pierrette Ringuette still in the Senate?

Kinsella and Ringuette are both long-time residents of the province of New Brunswick, Harper said. In contrast, Duffy claimed his primary residence was in Prince Edward Island, when it was not, Harper told the Commons.

Harper was responding as Mulcair demanded to know why Kinsella and Ringuette were still in the upper chamber, given the housing claims.

Mulcair asked, “Conservative Sen. Noël Kinsella and Liberal Sen. Pierrette Ringuette pulled the exact same trick as Mike Duffy, the trick that, on Oct. 24, the prime minister said was the reason for getting rid of Mike Duffy. Why are Noël Kinsella and Pierrette Ringuette still in the Senate?”

Harper said, “Mr. Duffy was living at a long-time residence and claiming travel expenses. The two senators in question are long-time residents of the province of New Brunswick.”

Kinsella bought his home in Ottawa in 1989 while he was on leave from his job at St. Thomas Aquinas University to work as a senior foreign affairs civil servant. At the time, Kinsella also owned a home in Fredericton, N.B., a city he has had ties to since 1965. In 1990, Brian Mulroney appointed Kinsella to the Senate.

Ringuette bought her Ottawa home in 1998, the year after she lost her seat in the House of Commons in an election. In 2002, Jean Chretien appointed Ringuette to the Senate.

Both told Postmedia News that they filed the proper paperwork with the Senate to support their expense claims. As well, neither sparked any concerns from the committee that oversaw a review of housing expenses.

Kinsella said earlier this week that the red chamber still had work to do on its spending rules to make them “crystal clear.”

In his statement attacking Mulcair, Kinsella wrote that Mulcair’s views “on Canada’s bicameral parliament and the Senate of Canada are well known” — a reference to the NDP’s position that the Senate should be abolished.

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